A 95-year-old Log Lane Village man has been diagnosed with West Nile virus, his daughter-in-law said.

Jamie Rosales said Jose Blanco was admitted to Colorado Plains Medical Center on July 31. Tests confirmed Blanco had tested positive last Friday, she said.

Rosales said Blanco was at the medical center for nine days. He is now undergoing rehabilitation at Valley View Villa in Fort Morgan.

Rosales said she believes Blanco contracted the virus at or near his home in Log Lane because that is where he lives and spends most of his time.

“He’s usually around here,” she said. “[He] sits outside at night and plays with the kids outside in the evening so I am pretty sure it came from here.”

Though Blanco is now recovering, Rosales said the virus had taken a serious toll on his health.

“He couldn’t talk, walk or eat,” she said. “He couldn’t do anything and there was a point where he didn’t know anything, he didn’t know anybody and he had inflammation in the brain and then it spread to the spine.”

Blanco also experienced hallucinations and other distressing effects.

“He was on his way out,” she said. “He was having visions and talking to people that weren’t there. He doesn’t remember it now but he was there talking to people that weren’t there and then going back to his childhood and stuff. At 95, that took a toll on him but he came through it.”

Rosales said Blanco was now able to talk and eat again and was speaking coherently. However, he is still having problems with his prostate and bladder.

Rosales said she had reached out to Log Lane officials to notify the town that West Nile had probably been contracted in it. She was discouraged to learn that the town had not yet sprayed for mosquitoes this summer due to problems with the spraying equipment. Assistant Town Clerk Bobbi Mesmer confirmed that Rosales had notified town officials about her father at Sunday’s picnic and they had told Rosales the town had not yet sprayed.

“The sprayer is unfixable so we have been reaching out to contractors and are hoping to have someone out here to do it as soon as we can,” Mesmer said.

Mesmer said learning about Blanco had increased Log Lane’s concern about West Nile and urgency to spray.

Still, Rosales said she was disappointed by what she felt was a lack of concern on the part of the town.

“I kind of felt like it wasn’t too big of a deal to them,” she said. “That’s why I contacted [The Times] because the community needs to know and I’ve seen what it can do and it’s not something I would want somebody else to go through.”

Colorado Plains Medical Center Public Information Officer Sandy Engle said the medical center could not confirm or deny that a patient there had been diagnosed with West Nile due to medical privacy laws. However, she said that West Nile is a reportable disease and the hospital’s protocol is to report any West Nile cases to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

CDPHE Director of Communications Mark Salley confirmed that West Nile is reportable but that individual cases may not be confirmed or publicly identified if there is a risk of making the patient identifiable in doing so. He said the department could announce the presence of specific cases if there is a threat to the public but that one case of West Nile alone would not usually constitute such a threat, particularly since West Nile cannot be passed from person-to-person. He said CDPHE does not usually announce new cases individually but that local agencies may chose to if there is not a risk of identifying the patient, although they are not required to. He also said individual patients and their families are free to announce their condition publicly as Rosales has done.

CDPHE does count the number of West Nile cases in the state and make that information publicly available online. The online count is currently three cases in 2017, a number which Salley identified as “not a large number” for Colorado.

Salley said the department would report cases to local health agencies though such reporting may not happen immediately. He said many cases are initially reported as suspected cases and must later be confirmed before being included in the count. Northeast Colorado Health Department information officer Jessa Hatch said her department had not yet received any West Nile reports.

The Boulder County Sheriff announced that he had been diagnosed with West Nile Monday, a week after a Lafayette man was announced to have been diagnosed with Boulder County’s first case this year. Those announcements suggest CDPHE’s online case count is likely not up to date as the count reflects only one additional diagnosed case statewide since June.

Paul Albani-Burgio writes features and covers entertainment, the arts and community events for the Loveland Reporter-Herald and Longmont TImes-Call. He came to Loveland from Fort Morgan, where he covered city and county government, crime and the ups and downs of the local sugar plant. He has also written for 5280 and Boston magazines and Bizwest. He is a fan of old movie theaters, Thai food and, despite their unwavering tendency to break his heart, the Mizzou Tigers.